You can wash your arm in a pool of mud. You can chop a tree, prevent a flood. You can speak with a turtle just by flipping him around. You can build a boat, sail the sea. You can buy a moat, forge a key. Initiate the sequence, create catastrophe...

My girls are 6 and 4 and I think they can easily cross off 35+ of those. I'm sure we'll add quite a few of the remaining ones this summer. The funny thing is that they came up with most of these on their own. Went camping last summer and they spent an hour or so damming up a little stream with rocks.

spittman:My girls are 6 and 4 and I think they can easily cross off 35+ of those. I'm sure we'll add quite a few of the remaining ones this summer. The funny thing is that they came up with most of these on their own. Went camping last summer and they spent an hour or so damming up a little stream with rocks.

What kid hasn't done that? I mean unless you live in the desert. Hell I was still at that when I was a teenager, even took an old discarded front door, loaded it in the station wagon and used it to dam up a stream. Growing up rural, you do learn to make your own fun.

Surprised myself at seeing just how many things activities on that list I did. I never thought much of it until now. That makes me feel pretty cool about my childhood. There are some things on the list I never heard of, and others they simply did not have when I grew up (Geocaching).

They omitted some things from the list that I did:

Make a tree houseBuild a fort in the woods with leftover particle board and wood scrapsExplore a cemeterySneak out late at night to hang out with your friendsHold hands with a girl (even as your friends are razing you).

also, as a kid I was lucky enough to do most of those things, as a kid my daughter has done most of those things, as a family we've done most of those things.

Sadly, you can't just stop the car, get out with your kids and feed the cows that are near the fence (pulled grass) anymore. Really frowned on

That GEO-crape to me is similar to a video game in that you need toys from home to make it work and you're always looking at one of the toys to see if you're going in the right direction. No interest (for me - YMMV)

1nsanilicious:They could have saved a lot of space in that article by simply stating become a Boy/Cub Scout.

Except all I did in boy scouts for years was play darts in my leaders basement, put together a leather pouch big enough to hold 3 quarters and do 10% of the lame tasks in the handbook in his backyard. And yes before you chime in I know my leader sucked.

I learned far more from my grandfather who was a WW2 vet and serious backwoods redneck. He was the son of a Blackfoot Indian woman who taught me more about the wilderness and survival than any poof boy/cub/eagle scout could hope to know, sorry. I respect that man more than any other as he was more than willing to teach me even as his heath failed near the end.

I mean no disprespect but every scout I have met (and I lived in a neighborhood with dozens) as been an overweight or skrawny nerd. It does have good intentions but needs more mentoring and less "stay outside the saftey circle when chopping wood". I know I am lucky to have a mentor like my grandfather and that the scouts serve to fill the void left by those without such luck, but the organization has been castrated and snowflaked to the point of failure.

Dig for nightcrawlersHead out fishing before dawnTake a rowboat up some tiny little channels for no reason at all (but avoid the ones that have the surprise caches of a billion mosquitoes)Have a competition at diving off a raftPlay kick-the-can as dusk changes over into nightTell ghost stories around a campfireBuild and fly and chase a model rocket, and wonder ever after where it landedCrawl or walk a tree that's fallen (or been placed) across a streamGo on a hayrideRide a minibike on an impromptu track on a cornfield at your cousin's farmDiscover and examine milkweedWalk through a meadow on a sunny morning when there's been a hard frostPut a penny on the railroad tracksPump your arm in the back seat and roll around laughing when the truck driver honks his hornEat a hot dog and drink a root beer from a tray on the car windowGo to a drive-in moviePlay sandlot baseball past suppertime and face your furious mother when you get home (my mom used to get way too mad about that)Lie on your stomach in your room for an entire beautiful summer afternoon, with your mother urging you to go outside, and look at your astronomy picture booksSet up a gnarly Hot Wheels track on a rainy dayWhen your mom is mopping the kitchen floors, use the chairs she dragged into the living room to pretend you're on a bus/ship/rocketTake apart everything on your bike and tinker with it, learn how it works, and put it back togetherRun out of the back of the house and hear the screen door bang behind youStare inside the pocket of a kid's pool table and imagine that the pools of light from the other pockets are little streetlights in a miniature worldActually fly to the moon and back with your two super-cool astronaut figures (your mom can testify that you narrated the entire mission)Have a dog for a petHave a cat for a pet

When I was a kid, we never went to Disney (though we went to a place called King's Island a couple of times). We never flew anywhere, went to anyplace exotic, or for example, did something like go to Sea World, and pay extra to get into a pool with dolphins. (Nothing wrong with any of those things.) We weren't poor but we were far from rich, so our excursions were in the car, pulling a trailer. I've never regretted it for a second. I had a lively imagination and I made my own fun. I wouldn't trade it for all of the let-us-entertain-you-for-a-price experiences imaginable.

What I missed out on was the experiences with grandparents. I had the coldest, crabbiest, most non-kid-friendly grandparents imaginable.

AsBaile:Build a fort in the woods with leftover particle board and wood scraps

Pretty sure that's what is meant by building a den. My kids have one in our woods. I like to sneak into it while they are tromping around back there and when the older one comes into the lair I say in a thick accent, "I see colonel, you have failed to withdraw your men."/guess you had to be there CSB

Never actually played conkers, but we used to bowl with the nuts, which we called monkey balls, so I marked that as "done". Likewise, there are other activities which are similar enough to the ones I marked as "not done yet". Catching a frog is pretty close to catching a crab. Oh wait, I did catch crabs once...

For growing up a in an inner-ring older suburb of Chicago that didn't afford one the nature opportunities that growing up in the country would have, I did okay on that list, not great, but okay (I also grew up in the 70's and early 80's where being tossed outside after lunch and forbidden to come back in unless you were bleeding until dinner was more common) . However, I've never camped, hunted or tracked anything and don't plan to start anytime soon oh, and horses scare the hell out of me.